The Joint Inspection on Rice Products Activated by Agriculture and Food Agency and Ministry of Health and Welfare

2015-04-20

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Min-Hsien Yang, Professor, Feng Chia University, Taiwan

I Han, Assistant Professor, Feng Chia University, Taiwan

Agriculture and Food Agency (AFA) will conduct joint inspections on rice products in Taiwan twice a year in coordination with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Ministry of Health and Welfare starting 2015. They will take an approach of joint action under division of labor to inspect domestic rice products as well as grains inventory regarding the level of pesticide residues. AFA will conduct joint investigations twice a year. The candidate firms will be randomly selected to get inspections in order to ensure food safety and quality for the Taiwanese people. The first joint investigation already started in April across 14 counties/ cities in Taiwan.

AFA explained further, that the joint investigation on quality and safety of rice products with FDA will be conducted once half a year, especially on the level of pesticide residues. The operational procedure will consult the local government under the supervision of the local branch of AFA to randomly select candidates in order to keep it fair. For example, according to the current project this year, AFA plans to select a total of 100 samples of rice products, out of four storage venues from each selected production company. If the number of storage venues is not enough, it means AFA is able to increase the number of selected production company in accordance with the demanded number of investigations.

AFA emphasizes constant project implementation of securing the rice product safety. The main tasks include monitoring pesticides on-site in the rice fields, random investigation of harvest grains delivered by farmers, and overall pesticide investigations of public grains. AFA intends to establish the whole safety net from the source of rice production. By doing so, rice safety and food quality can be gradually secured. According to AFA statistics, there have been 202 rice production companies investigated, including 397 storage venues owned by them. A high percentage of 99.5% (397 products) investigated products passed, while 0.5% (2 products) of the rest of failing products were immediately sealed to stop the following procedures of rice processing and further onto market sales. Consumers are therefore protected and rice products are now sold with safety qualification.